Hear My Train A Comin'

Still great and Hendrix does a cover of Sunshine of Your Love, which makes one lament the wrong guitarist died. Let't not go there.

The frequency of the posts is due to my procrastination in doing my taxes. As Douglas Adams, another great procrastinator, said,"I love deadlines. I love to hear them "whoosh" when they go by."

An important message to all Americans from the Right Wing: Obama is going to outlaw fishing everywhere in the United States and off the coasts. This is as good as Sean Hannity's Fox show in California where he discovered that President Obama was denying the citizens of California water because he was saving an endangered snail.

Great news from Rasmussen again, President Obama has dropped to 43% approval rating--the lowest of all time. Remember my 9% rule for Rasmussen's polls. The AP poll has Obama approval rating steady for the last two months at 53%, which is the same as the Daily Kos RS2000 poll. President Obama has gained ground on national security issues, especially the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and the escalation of the war in Afghanistan. On the economy and health care, he still retains support from half the population.

But Congress does not fare so well. Approval of Congress has fallen to about 20%. Still, only 30% approve of how Republican congresscritters are going, compared to 36% for Democrats. Interestingly, on who should control Congress, it's 44% Democrats and 38% Republicans.

A new twist in my view is that a majority believe their congresscritter should not be re-elected. Usually, Congress' approval can fall into mud but usually when the question is asked about your representative a majority want their guy or gal re-elected.

The AP found that 56% believe America is headed in the wrong direction. This is usually the bellwether question for politics. But remember at the start of the Obama Administration only 18% felt America was heading in the right direction. As jobs start being produced, I expect the right way-wrong way numbers will shift.

Nate "The Great" Silver over at www.fivethirtyeight.com has recovered from the Olympics to make his Senate predictions for 2010. Nate was only 1 or 2 medals off in his Olympic medal predictions. He says the Democrats retain control of the Senate with 54.7 seats. Harry Reid is defeated and Dick Durbin or Charles Schumer becomes majority leader. For the Republicans to take control of the Senate, Nate says they have to run the circuit. He says they can't. On the other hand, Karl Rove says the Republicans will regain the Senate. He's wrong. Bet on Nate.

Our socialist President seems to be saving capitalism, despite itself. Mike Dorning writing in Bloomberg News reports that US stocks, which hit their post-financial-crisis low on March 9, 2009, have risen more than 68%, and the the Standard & Poor's 500 Index is up 41% since Obama took office. He quotes one chief economic strategist as saying," If he was a Republican, we would hear a never-ending drumbeat of news stories about markets voting in favor of the President."

The chief analyst for Morgan Stanley predicts the U.S. will add 300,000 jobs in March,the most in four years. Another analyst points to productivity growing 6.9% in the fourth quarter, which was the biggest one-year gain since 2002. Commodities prices are up 32% since Obama took office. The bottom-line in the article is that everyone, including a slightly grumpy former assistant Treasury Secretary for George W., agrees that none of this would have happened without President Obama's policies.

Peace is breaking out! Todd Palin's snowmobile for the 2010 Iron Dog race is being sponsored by CITGO. That's right Hugo Chavez's CITGO. The Right again meets the Left.

Our Chief of the Supreme Court, Judge Roberts, got his feelings hurt at the State of the Union address. He told students in Alabama--seems he can't speak in a union state--that it was "troubling" that the President criticized the Supreme Court. And he doesn't know why the Supreme Court justices have to go because it's just a political pep rally. Sniff,sniff. The White House responded that what was troubling was the Court's Citizens United decision that allowed American and foreign corporations to make unlimited campaign contributions. You know the decision was bad when there is actually a real bipartisan effort to pass legislation to stop its worst effects.

Larry King asked Eric Massa whether he was gay. Y.M.C.A.

One of the problems conservatives have with social networking is that people might respond to them. Our homophobic attorney-general Ken Cuccinelli has a Facebook page and he has been inundated by protesting citizens against his decree to universities not to protect gays. More than 3,000 university students joined a Facebook page to end discrimination of gays at Virginia's Universities and another 1,000 organized their own Facebook protest at William & Mary. VCU is having a rally for gay rights with about 1,000 people. And Christopher Newport University is hosting a meeting led by both Republican and Democratic student leaders to plan next steps to pressure the state government. Virtually all the administrations of the unievsrities and colleges in the state have protested vehemently. And unfortunately for the state Republicans this has made the national news via the Washington Post.

But the Washington Post are great ones to talk. When gay and lesbian couples got their marriage licenses, the paper printed a photo of happy lesbians, but only posted a picture of gay males kissing on their website. A follow-up story about the first weddings did the same thing.

Bob Barr and former Attorney General Mukasey have weighed in against Liz Cheney. Bob Barr is a fascinating character. One of the prime movers of the case for impeachment against Bill Clinton, Barr had an abrupt change of positions during the George W. Bush administration. Barr even beat the ACLU to the punch organizing people to oppose the Patriot Act. His stance on the Cheney episode is much more constitutionally based than the other critics. He thinks all those charged with terrorism should have defense lawyers and be tried in civilian courts.

When I ran the Republican Institute, the Germans were bothered by what they perceived as growing isolationism in the United States. They saw this coming from our right-wing, which by nature are isolationists. They co-sponsored with me two days of seminars on American foreign policy but they demanded I have a real isolationist. I called Bob Barr. Even though he served as a CIA agent, Barr was vocal in his isolationism. He graciously accepted and his remarks left the German guests stunned. They had never heard anyone articulate the case for isolationism before.

After seeing Marc Thiessen on John Stewart, you might want to embrace isolationism. I don't think he should be given any forum even if it's to debate or lampoon his positions. We've produced a culture where you succeed by failing upward.

At some point, I will try to cobble together a post on the latest terrorist arrests in the United States and the two court trials in New York City, which seem to have escaped media notice. It seems the Obama Administration wants to try 9/11 conspirators in civilian courts except for Khalid Sheik Muhammed. That is the latest compromise with the Republicans. I don't like it.

The Eric Massa thing did not work out so well for conservatives. This morning's e-mails brought me complaints that Bart Stupak, an anti-abortion Democrat, is being bribed by the White House to support health care reform. We do know he is being primaried now. But we must get up and arms against the "corruption" of the Obama Administration.

Glenn Beck on his Massa disaster tried to get the former congressmen to talk about corruption. To his credit, Massa just said nothing is going to change unless we have campaign finance reform. He went on to say that the lobbyists and special interests were to blame. This Beck did not want to hear. I guess no progressives were mentioned.

I'm sorry to report Rush Limbaugh says he's not moving to Costa Rica. Apparently, he heard too many comments that it had universal health care. But, never fear, Rushbo and Ann Coulter are waging war on sea turtles, who are migrating to Palm Beach to lay their eggs. This should keep them occupied for awhile.

Watch for some further explosions on Glenn Beck's proposed rally at the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I have a Dream" speech. It seems military personnel are upset that military charities are acting as co-sponsors for this event and raising funds for it. The backlash is not only because they see worthwhile charities abusing their non-profit status but that they object to the theme of "Restore Our Honor". The serving military complaints about this is that Beck sounds like an anti-Vietnam war protester with this stuff and what honor do we have to restore. Between the Jesuits and the American military, he knows how to pick enemies.